Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! For some reason, this is one of my favorite holidays. (I'm sure it has something to do with the food!)

This morning I was thinking about what I'm thankful for, and I decided to put a (very) short list together:

First, I’ll go with the obvious: I’m grateful for heat. It’s cold here in the Northwest right now. Frigid and icy. I will never again underestimate the value of warmth and shelter.

I’m grateful for my family. Yes, obviously I mean my husband and my kids, but I mean the rest of them too....the crazy extended family that I don’t get to spend NEARLY enough time with. ( And thankfully, I get to see some of them today!)

I’m grateful for computers. Because I remember writing on typewriters. And paper cuts. I remember using white-out, and throwing away sheet after sheet of paper because I changed my mind (again!) about where I was going with a scene.

And also for the internet, because I also remember spending hours in the library trying to find info on weapons and pagan holidays and geography. One word: GOOGLE!

But mostly, I’m grateful that you guys have been here to share this amazing, thrill-ride of a debut year with me! Thank you so much for all of your support!!!!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

I've reached the point in my revisions where it's become a raging obsession. I'm skipping meals, avoiding my family, and even dreaming about this project. I woke up at 5(!!!) this morning and couldn't go back to sleep because I was thinking about a certain scene, reworking it in my head. I finally just got out of bed so I could work on it.

The good news: This kind of obsessive behavior means I should be wrapping things up fairly quickly, so I can go back to doing normal things, like eating. And showering.

The bad news: You guys have no idea what I'm talking about because this isn't a project I've even told you about yet. (That should change soon, though!)

Also, I just got word that Denmark has joined The Body Finder ranks. So a huge shout out to Politiken, my new Danish publisher, for being brilliant enough to snatch up TBF! Tak (thank you), Denmark!!!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Loved: I loved your creativity. I loved your enthusiasm. I loved the fact that you were willing to do my work for me in coming up with uber-cool catch-phrases. I loved that you were so much better at this than I am. And I loved that even my editor sent me a suggestion!

Hated: I hated that I loved so many of your catch-phrases! Seriously, this was SO DAMN HARD! I thought there would be one (maybe two) clear and shiny winners that I would immediately be able to spot among all the others, and just know that that was: THE ONE!

Um, no. Not so much.

I toiled. I made lists. I narrowed them down. I asked my husband for his opinion. And then I asked my kids. And when I couldn’t narrow it down any further I asked one of my favorite online writer groups to vote. And they did, and it was still fairly divided.

But I think we’ve finally done it. Two catch-phrases that we all kept going back to over and over again.

So, here goes (and don’t hate me if yours isn’t on here, seriously, it probably made the cut at some point, this was agonizing…):

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

You know that episode of The Twilight Zone where the author thinks her new book is coming out in four months, and that she has plenty of time for promo and eating bon-bons (and everything else that we authors do all day), and then suddenly her editor emails her to say that they’ve changed their minds and they want the new book to come out earlier????

Really, you don’t remember that one? Weird…maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it was just my email from my editor saying that DESIRES OF THE DEAD will be coming out AN ENTIRE MONTH EARLIER!!!!! That’s right, instead of March 15th, Desires of the Dead will now hit stores on February 15th!

Excited? Of course!

Freaked out? Hell, yeah!!! (I’ve gotta get me some bookmarks, stat!)

Oh , and by the way, does anyone out there want to be Jay’s Valentine? ;)

I've been reading through all of your contest entries, and you have absolutely BLOWN ME AWAY with all your clever catch-phrases. It's gonna take me a couple of days to sort through them all...and to get some outside votes to get them narrowed down to the top two (seriously, I'm not sure how that's ever going to happen!).